Emergency vehicles, such as firetrucks, are designed to respond efficiently to emergency situations, such as fires. Thus, in many conventional firetrucks, for example, the occupant cabin includes seats having cavities formed therein for a tank of a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). In this way, a firefighter can wear the tank when responding to an emergency, which reduces the donning time at the scene. However, given the modification of the seats for storing SCBA, generally no further storage is provided for the SCBA after returning from a call. As such, a firefighter will typically store the SCBA in the seat in the firetruck cabin.
Nowadays, fires in modern structures typically involve more than just burning wood, plaster, and natural fibers. Often, plastic and other synthetic structures as well as materials coated or treated with a variety of chemicals are contained in modern structures, and during a fire, the combustion of these materials releases a variety of chemicals into the air. During the fire, the firefighter's personal protective equipment and SCBA prevent the firefighter from coming into contact or breathing such potentially harmful chemicals, but the chemicals may deposit on the firefighter's personal protective equipment and SCBA.
However, after returning from a fire, firefighters may be at an increased risk of coming into contact or breathing these chemicals because the SCBA are often stored in the cabin of the firetruck. In particular, after a fire, chemicals that may have deposited on the SCBA may off-gas in the cabin while firefighters riding therein are not wearing any protective gear. Therefore, a need exists in the art for a way to safely store SCBA in a manner that isolates the contaminated SCBA from the occupant space but also provides for convenient and efficient access to the SCBA at the scene of a fire and storage of the SCBA when leaving the scene of a fire.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide such storage devices and methods for SCBA. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.